Behind the scenes of I Am Strong Just Being Me 🌸💪🏼
Here’s some of HOW I went about illustrating I Am Strong Just Being Me, a picture book by Laura Dockrill and, me ☺︎ …
The process of illustrating I Am Strong Just Being Me was fast and fun. I was contacted about the book in Dec 2023 and needed to finish the illustrations in time for the Bologna Book Fair in Apr 2024. This was no problem as I loved the text by Laura and worked with an amazing art director, Rebecca Essilifie. We started with character sketches and sample art of Bean, Nanna and also the garden. It was important that Nanna was cool and fresh, not frumpy, so I put her in a pair of Doc Martens and dungarees. Bean is based on how I was when I was little, and am now, so is quite androgynous, since I related to the theme of the book so much. I made sure to put Bean and Nanna in bright colours that would stand out against the busy background of the garden.
After that I did thumbnail sketches! You can see above that the garden in my early sketches had cactuses in it. But we realised to keep it feeling like a garden, not the wild, it needed flowers and trees that are closer to home. Rebecca suggested thinking of the garden as a character too, which was really helpful. The garden is where we find a lot of the strength that is referred to in the book, so it was important that the garden was as expressive and expansive as possible, while also feeling like a garden. To this end, I did a sketchy map of the garden, and in doing so, learnt quite a bit about garden design, and garden flower names and meanings.
What I learnt about flowers is visible in the endpapers. They are my favourite endpapers I’ve done so far, as they add an extra layer to the book!
Finally, here is the evolution of one my favourite spreads! I love this scene because Bean realises that it is strong to ask for help, which is so important and something that I constantly have to remember.
I Am Strong Just Being Me is out now, published by Little Tiger Books, and you can buy it at any bookshop in the U.K. and Ireland. If you have any more questions about how I made this book you can email me at kip.alizadeh@gmail.com ☺︎
